A week's worth of WORD OF THE DAY

This week's WORDs of the DAY are: accountable, brouhaha, philippic, dishevel, mawkish. The challenge: Use them all CORRECTLY in ONE SENTENCE.

AAllen:
My husband accused me of being mawkish after my philippic when I got back to my disheveled home and realized that nobody was held accountable for the brouhaha that took place while I was at work.

CFloros:
I feel accountable for the brouhaha that ensued after my mawkish philippic about the disheveled appearance of too many of our students.

FSmith(modified for publication):
The Principal emerged from his office a bit disheveled and mawkish for the calmer days at his school after the many philippics he had to endure from parents who held him accountable for the brouhaha on Tuesday.

MJones:(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
I was quite disheveled, feeling rather mawkish and prepared to begin a philippic attack yesterday as I realized just how fed up I am with the group who refuses to be accountable for their actions and continues to participate in creating a brouhaha in the staff cafeteria.

MEtesten:
The brouhahas of the past week resulted in much wailing and disheveled hair among the students followed by mawkish displays of contrition, as those accountable for said brouhahas endured loud philippics from their deans.

JJarot:
I was held accountable for the brouhaha that my disheveled appearance caused at Rod Blagojevich's mawkish philippic.

DBrown:
The disheveled student mawkishly walked down to the dean's office because he was holding himself accountable for the philippic he made and the brouhaha that ensued.

CThorson(not ONE sentence- but very clever!)
So during the season openers of LOST, a lot has happened. Jack Shepard is holding himself accountable for all the bad things happening to the people back on the island after he spoke with Jeremy Bentham. Jack finally cleaned himself up after his dishevelled self tried to jump off a bridge from this guilt of leaving the other Oceanic survivors behind. Meanwhile, back on the island, the time is skipping and it's making Sawyer so angry that he is throwing a philippic at Dr. Daniel Faraday since he's not explaining it properly. Eventually, the Others captured the remaining survivors and brought them back to their camp. At the camp, there seemed to be a brouhaha since there were a lot of Others hanging around. Faraday was told by Richard Alpert there was an H-Bomb on the Island. Faraday told Richard he would dismantle it, and Richard questioned him thinking he'd go there to activate it. Then, Faraday said he was in love with Charolette Lewis, and he would never hurt her. It was a very mawkish moment. But the best part was that we found out Charles Widmore is an Other!!! Total shocker!

BYanello:
Given my disheveled living style, complete lack of accountability, a mawkish wife, and my boss's constant phillipic, I need a brouhaha!!!

TFox:
Those who delivered the philippic were accountable for the brouhaha that left many disheveled and somewhat mawkish.

LKubik(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
I will not be accountable for the brouhaha caused by my philippic response when I saw that someone had disheveled my mawkish Valentine display.

MHolubik(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
I am feeling mawkish and me mind is desheveled from all the brouhaha that happened due to the philippic behavior this week, and I feel the students should be held accountable for their actions.

LScanlan(TECHNICALLY DISQUALIFED- INCORRECT USE OF PHILIPPIC)
A mawkish teacher reflects on the students who were held accountable for the philippic language they used during the brouhaha they started that left the halls of the school disheveled.

SStashak:
I hold my children accountable for their brouhahas, disheveled appearances, and apathetic attitudes, however, their mawkish responses to my philippics cause great exasperation.

Geek Brief 012708 -Comic Strip Creator

Make Beliefs - Comic Strip Creation

Think about the opportunity to have your students create a 3 pane comic strip as an alternative to conventional writing. MAKE BELIEF is your tool.

Make Beliefs is a free comic strip creation tool that provides students with a variety of templates, characters, and prompts for building their own comic strips. Make Beliefs provides students with a pre-drawn characters and dialogue boxes which they can insert into each box of their comic strip. The editing options allow users all kind of flexibility. You can change the size of each character and dialogue bubble, bring elements forward within each box, and alter the sequence of each box in the comic strip. AND, here is the best part: Make Beliefs allows users to write their comic strip dialogue in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portugese, or Latin.

Think of the options for any content area. A really fun way for students to be creative The program is internet based and allows for an easy print option- Allowing for a one class period activity. It is very cool-- Check it out!

(Thanks Freetech4teachers!)

GEEK BRIEF 012109 - WORDLE

Wordle is a free 'word art' tool that takes a group of words and creates a visual representation. Originally designed as a fun maker of word clouds, Wordle is being used in interesting ways to provide compelling summaries of anything word related.
As the site says, " Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."
I have used it to create a cloud of our WORDS OF THE DAY for the semester


Following are a few ideas to consider(thanks to Rod Lucifer of the blog "Clever Sheep"):

1] Convert a sonnet or Shakespearean play;
2] Key people in historical events
3] Combine student 'Who Are You?' introductions, to develop a class composite;
4] Condense survey data by dumping content of questionnaire responses into the Wordle engine;
5] A new take on "reflecting" or journaling.
6] Turn an essay into a poster;
7] Automate the creation of word poetry;
8] As an introduction to a unit or course, combine key words; themes; curriculum expectations to provide learners with a visual overview of content;
9] Convert nutritional content of one's weekly diet or of a group's menu preferences
10] Paste the results of a Google search (Can you guess the keywords I used?);
11] Enter keywords from weekly weather reports to obtain a seasonal picture;
12] Distill song lyrics
13] Find out what you've been up to by summarizing To-Do lists;
14] Represent the results of a brainstorming session or the minutes of a meeting visually;
15] Show "This date in History" stories in a new way;

Try it- it really is fun!

GEEK BRIEF 011209 - WIKIS

Today's brief is a WIKI- Information about WIKIS is a conversation for another day(I will have several posts on "wikis" at a later date) Essentially, wikis are based on the same concept as "Wikipedia"-- an online space where people can collaborate/share information. A wiki is a page or collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content. Basically, anyone and everyone can share and CREATE the information on the page- The implication for education is how correct/factual/ reliable is the information? That said, wikis that are created with activities are often good resources as there is no research or statistical reliability involved. So-here is today's BRIEF

Teampedia - A Wiki of Team Building Activities

Teampedia is a wiki of team building activities. On Teampedia you can find games and activities for groups of all sizes and ages. They call themselves "a collaborative encyclopedia of free team building activities, free icebreakers, teamwork resources, and tools for teams that anyone can edit! The site is designed for a wide audience including: team leaders, trainers, teachers, managers, camp directors, counselors, and youth groups. Teampedia is a wiki so, as you would expect, you can add your own suggestions to Teampeida.

Ideas for the classroom
Teampedia could be a good source of ice-breaker and "getting to know you" activities,as well as team building, collaboration, diversity and team strategy activities.

As we begin a new semester, take a look and see if there is anything that you might use on those first days of getting to know your class. As with blogging, don't be afraid to share or add any of your own ideas/activities on the wiki-- It is a simple process.

GEEK BRIEF 010609

Good morning-- Here is this week's GEEK BRIEF.

GOOGLE NEVER STOPS RE-INVENTING ITSELF.

Google has made it a little easier to refine image searches. Until now, if you entered a search term in Google Images you would get all kinds of images:photographs, drawings, paintings, and clip art. Now you can refine those results by selecting "faces," "clip art," "line drawings," "photo content," or "news content" from a drop down menu or select the type menu.




I know that personally, this will be a help to me as there are times when I want a certain type of image, and would prefer not to have to look through everything else.

Applications for Education
Google calls the new image search options "search-by-style", I call it just plain helpful. Any tool that can help students focus their searches is useful in my book. Less time struggling to find appropriate search results can translate into more time spent thinking, writing, and creating.

Check it out!!

Everything is fine in 2009!

Greetings-- It's back to school and a brand new year. Wipe the slate clean, start anew, make those resolutions, plans and try to keep them!

Florida was great- 3 rounds of golf, too much food and laughter and plenty of great friendships!

But, now, it's back to work. Given the great response to the 12 days of TECHristmas, I plan to continue with a weekly GEEK BRIEF. I will post the "briefs" on this blog as well as the group email route. Hopefully we can all keep a resolution to continue learning and growing. Posts will appear on Tuesday or Wednesdays

Off to the Warmth!

Amidst rain, fog and TORNADO warnings in December, I pack to go south. Florida here I come. Can't wait to chase a little white ball for a few days and enjoy the company of friends. Koz, I will miss being with you - but this time I get to play while you work.
I hope that the really bad stuff stays away until my plane gets up. Looking forward to seeing Sue and Gayle and the Villages.
It has been a very nice Christmas-now the R & R starts. NGKA headed home today- Godspeed and be safe.

Christmas Marathon

202 miles, 6 stops, 4 dogs, 1 cat and plenty of food and drink made for a GREAT Christmas! The day began at 8:30am and ended at 11:30 pm -but we saw everyone, talked to those that we coudn't see and thoroughly enjoy ourselves. That is what Christmas is all about

Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful. ~Norman Vincent Peale

Two of my favorite days of the year-Two frantic days of travel, visits, gifts and joy. NGKA made it safely from MN-a 9 hour trip in lot of snow. Looking forward to seeing everyone tonight and tomorrow. Sorry that Ed will be in China-we'll miss you cous!
Happy, Happy, Merry MERRY

The push to Chritmas

I awake this morning to a new blanket of snow and the news of a Bears comeback. I admit it-- I was frustrated and went to bed.
Apparently the offense and the good luck fairies woke up and the Bears won in overtime-YIPEE!!

Beautiful snow overnight-thank goodness we bought a new snowblower last year! Lots of wrapping to do today. NGAK driving in from MN today-it will be a slow trip I'm sure. Final prep for the holiday. I love this time of year and all that it brings: Snow, Love and Miracles!

School's Out!

The 12th day of TECHristmas will have to wait. I sit snug and warm in my family room as the snow and ice flies outside. 6:00 am seems a little late to be making a decision-but a decision non the less.

I hope that the 12 days has been enjoyable and a start to an ongoing learning journey. Enjoy the time off -Enjoy your families and friends-And enjoy all that the season of wonder brings.

12 Days of TECHristmas - Day 11

This morning's flood only dampens THINGS- not our SPIRITS
'way to carry on COUGARS!!!


Today's item is DELICIOUS(www.de.licio.us.com) YUM!

The Web is a big place, full of new and interesting things to discover. The problem is finding the good stuff and keeping track of it all. This is where Delicious can help.

Delicious is a Social Bookmarking service, which means you can save all your bookmarks online, share them with other people, and see what other people are bookmarking. (Don't let the word SOCIAL bother you-that's what makes it cool-that ability to share)

Things you can do with Delicious
Bookmark any site on the Internet, and get to it from anywhere
Instead of having different bookmarks on every computer, Delicious makes it easy to have a single set of bookmarks kept in sync between all of your computers. Even if you're not on a computer you own, you can still get to your bookmarks on the Delicious website.

Share your bookmarks, and get bookmarks in return
If your friends use Delicious, you can send them interesting bookmarks that they can check out the next time they log in. Of course, they can do the same for you. As you explore the site and find interesting users, you can use our Subscriptions and Network features to keep track of the Delicious tags and users you find most interesting.

Discover the most useful and interesting bookmarks on the web
See what's hot with Delicious users by checking out our popular tags. By looking at popular bookmarks for a tag, you'll be able to discover the most interesting bookmarks on the topics you're most interested in. Browse bookmarks on just about anything from the best programming tips to the most popular travel sites, all in an easy to read format.

Imagine creating a series of book marks of sites and sharing the with your students!
Take a look at this site-I think that this is a very cool idea that has implication in the classroom.

PAINT PROJECTS

CREATIVITY ABOUNDS @ PSHS!!

12 Days of TECHristmas - Day 10

Good morning!!

Today we have another "did you know that you have this available to you?"
PAINT is today's software(located in your "Standard Applications")- PAINT certainly is not Photoshop, but it is a simple program used to draw, color, and edit pictures. You can use Paint like a digital sketchpad to make simple pictures and creative projects or to add text and designs to other pictures, such as those taken with your digital camera.

Following are two resources:

Microsoft's help for PAINT(VISTA):
http://windowshelp.microsoft.com/Windows/en-US/help/f5feb1df-8dd7-4ab0-9f65-3c1c89a329ab1033.mspx

Or a really good tutorial
http://fay.iniminimo.com/paint.html

Here is today's quest- Play with PAINT--Enclosed is my change in the PSHS cougar for the season
Email me your "project" we will display them on the blog

WEBQUESTS

We are going to use this for Huck Finn:
http://campus.lakeforest.edu/~ragland/mlee/student.html#Introduction

Day 10

Today's topic- WEBQUESTS

A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web. The model was developed by Bernie Dodge at San Diego State University in 1995. They provide teachers with controlled researching/inquiry, and learners with specific guidelines and outcomes.
Here is a webquest about webquests: http://webquest.sdsu.edu/webquestwebquest-hs.html
San Diego State University is the ultimate resource for webquest and has a terrific search site available athttp://webquest.org/search/index.php
There are certainly other resources out there--here is another of the "good ones" :
http://eduscapes.com/tap/topic4.htm

Here's today's quest--Take a look at the SDSU site-do the webquest on webquests if you are unfamiliar with them.
Then--look around and see if you can find a webquest that you would use--or like to use--Forward the URL to me and I will share it
Have fun!

Good morning--Hope your week-end was good-Today is the beginning of the end- the last 5 day of TECHristmas.
Hope you are having fun and learning something along the way.

Today's session concerns books. Are you aware of all of the ways that you can now " read" a book? The advent of technology now allows for ebooks, and audio books. You can purchase books on CD,s download them to your portable mp3 player or download them in various digital formats, from PDF files to specific pocket reader software. It all follows the "anytime-anywhere" possibilities that technology provides.

Today's quest can take little or not time, depending on how interested you are. Find your local library's web site - explore it for options of digital media- See what is available to you-You might be surprised! With many of us traveling for the holidays, digital books allow us to listen to book during our travels or read it on a handheld device like a palm pilot or even your cell phone!

Taking it one step farther, Amazon has introduced the KINDLE, a electronic device that allows for wireless download of books and other kinds of publications

For those who might be interested, we will have one in the media center in late February
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Device/dp/B000FI73MA
At any rate- see what is available to you - READ!!!

Teacher Tube

2 math videos:





Top 10 Things you don't learn about teaching in College



Teachers Make a Difference




Science - Egg in a bottle -upside down twist

12 Days of TECHristmas - Day 7

Another week closer to BREAK!! Today's quest is another explore opportunity

TeacherTube officially launched on March 6, 2007. Its goal is to provide an online community for sharing instructional videos. They seek to fill a need for a more educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. It is a site to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers. As well, it is a site where teachers can post videos designed for students to view in order to learn a concept or skill.
Many of us are frustrated when we find something that we would like to share on YouTube only to find that our system block access to the site--Here is another option-A site by and for teachers!!
So--go to Teachertube.com--Search your content area or interest area--Find something that you like or would use in class -Send me the video's name and I will compile them for the BLOG.

I encourage you to create an account and become a part of their community. With the TEACHERTUBE community you can:
*Upload, tag and share videos worldwide.
*Upload Support Files to attach your educational Actvities, Assessments, Lesson Plans, Notes, and Other file formats to your video.
*Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members.
*Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests.
*Customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists.
*Integrate TeacherTube videos on websites using video embeds or APIs.
*Make videos public or private - users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite.
*Most importantly, TeacherTube community members are a major part of the evolution of the site. Members are encouraged to not only upload educationally relevant videos, but also to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to one as an educator or learner. Users also have the ability to preserve the integrity of the site by flagging inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove any inappropriate posts. With more collegial commentary and discussion through messaging and responses, the quality of this resource will only increase.

Smartboard Resources

Compilation of SMARTboard resources:


I found this really awesome one at: http://www.think-bank.com/iwb/science.html#chem
It would work so well next semester when we're balancing equations. I downloaded it, but i can't get it to open.


http://www.education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities/Notebook+activities/Browse+Notebook/United+States/Secondary/10-12/Math/Pythagorean+Theorem+3.htm
This one comes with a Senteo set of questions as well. I love being tech savvy!!!!!!!!!!!!!



http://www.teacherled.com/resources/keywords/keywordload.html
Here is a link to a word jumble lesson that is awesome. I am going to use this with my kids when we do vocabulary words.


Here is a page with a bunch of lessons!
http://www1.center.k12.mo.us/EDTECH/SB/templates.htm


One of my favorite BLOGS that I check daily is entitled "Teachers Love SMARTboards!" It is written by Jim Hollis, a math/computer science educator from Arizona. He has AMAZING resources!!
His blog is: http://smartboards.typepad.com/
He listed his favorite resources of the year at : http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/smartboard-web-resources-2008.html
Favorite websites are listed at:
http://smartboards.typepad.com/smartboard/smartboard-website-listin.html
The SMARTboard folks have their won resources @ http://education.smarttech.com/ste/en-US/Ed+Resource/Lesson+activities
Another great site is:
http://www.teacherled.com/
Here's another- a school District's compilation
http://www.lm.havre.k12.mt.us/teachertools/smartboard/webresources.html